As long as you have enough power over people, you can use them for strategies that they did not develop themselves, that do not suit them, and that lead to results they do not approve of. It's like a game of chess. One person thinks and moves their pieces on the board. When entrepreneurs today get upset that people behave like wooden figures, don't think for themselves, and show no initiative, it may be because these people have been standing around on a chessboard for too long. What can be done about this? If you look closely enough, you wonder who is actually still playing among all the pieces. And there is another problem. In an increasingly complex and diverse game, individual strategists no longer have a sufficient overview of the situation to be able to establish a central control system that works. What is needed, therefore, is a new form of strategy that integrates the intelligence of the entire team or the entire community.

There are not an excessive number of individuals in a group who possess strategic talent. One could argue that, in principle, anyone who can distinguish white from black can play chess. To this, one could respond that, of course, almost anyone can lose at chess. However, to win at an appealing level, you need a suitably gifted, trained, and informed mind that is comfortable in the abstract realm of strategy. The same is true of the visionaries in a society. These people should be identified and then employed for visioning and strategic planning. If a team wants to use NVC-plus to manage itself against this backdrop, the question arises as to whether this is a contradiction. Self- management and following a strategy developed by someone else. To resolve this paradox, we have developed the NVC-plus strategy.

The NVC-plus strategy aims to bring everyone's skills together in an inclusive way. However, everyone should retain their freedom of choice without straying from the course of the shared vision. How do we do that? It's simple. The StrategyMap consists only of questions, or more precisely, a concentric set of questions. The StrategyMap starts with the central question that needs to be answered by everyone's actions. For example, a few people are founding a new educational institute. What is the central strategic question for this institute? Perhaps the strategists start with: “What does the education of the future look like?” Then the strategists consider how play and learning are related and, at the next level, they ask the question: “How can education/teaching be made more fun?” And: “How do we measure progress?” This is followed by another branch. There, a question might be: “How are play and learning connected?” and “Which existing games do we want to use and how?” etc.

There should be as few questions as possible, and these should be arranged in a logical order. The ongoing task is to optimize this strategic plan, particularly to improve the questions, move them to other levels if necessary, and add any missing questions. Feedback from practitioners helps the strategists in this process. The end result is a very small set of strategic questions that is made available to practitioners and implementers. As long as employees provide good “answers” to the questions through their actions, they will always act within the framework of the strategy without anyone telling them what to do. In other words, they have control without losing freedom.